


Pragmatic

by Ash_Cassidy97



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: BAMF Leia Organa, BAMF Phasma, Ethics, F/F, I'm gonna make that a thing, M/M, The Problem of Anakin, Unintentional Redemption
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-18
Updated: 2016-06-18
Packaged: 2018-07-15 20:22:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7237105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ash_Cassidy97/pseuds/Ash_Cassidy97
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is a kid, playing dressup. Throw in a joke about the black eye liner. Throw in a joke about the dead, the broken, the helpless, those who believe.</p>
<p>When Phasma wasn’t Phasma, she believed in prayer. She’d sit up at night, pledging her allegiance to the First Order, as was proper. She grew up with bedtime stories about the nightmares of the Resistance, people like Leia Organa and Luke Skywalker who hid under her rack and in closets. Her nightmares would try to kill her. She prayed because she was a good stormtrooper, she stomp-marched everyday until a woman would teach her to fly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pragmatic

He is a kid, playing dressup. Throw in a joke about the black eye liner. Throw in a joke about the dead, the broken, the helpless, those who believe.

 

When Phasma wasn’t Phasma, she believed in prayer. She’d sit up at night, pledging her allegiance to the First Order, as was proper. She grew up with bedtime stories about the nightmares of the Resistance, people like Leia Organa and Luke Skywalker who hid under her rack and in closets. Her nightmares would try to kill her. She prayed because she was a good stormtrooper, she stomp-marched everyday until a woman would teach her to fly.

 

Say a prayer for your dead. Bury them with the bodies of the enemies. This is your hope, your promise. You are  **loyal** .

 

He was a kid playing dressup because that’s what kids do, the ones who never grow up. Here’s a clue: Anakin Skywalker grew up. Kylo Ren grew up. Stop giving him the pretense that it is just a costume to throw on, eyeliner to wipe off.

 

Phasma. Give her a good story, let’s talk about Finn. Let’s talk about how Finn was ready to kill her and Han Solo stopped him, more or less. She learned something that day, it wasn’t the lesson her precious First Order would want. She didn’t believe in prayer anymore but she didn’t believe that her nightmares were monsters. She couldn’t. She had to believe that her nightmare was a man who stole his name back, stole himself back act by act.

 

He paced the deck of the ship, believing that he would defeat a scavenger. One day. He could feel her on the other side of the Force. He hadn’t lost touch with reality, not yet, not quite. It was not the key to redemption.

 

Anakin Skywalker put on a mask. He was not lost, he was not denied hope nor understanding from the Jedi. Obi Wan was his brother, he would have forgiven his apprentice for all his worth and it would not have been grating. Anakin Skywalker put on a mask and he chose it because he thought his wife and child would die and then he killed them in his fear.

 

But there was redemption in the end. But he would be dead.

 

If he were alive, would there still be redemption. Is redemption only for the high and mighty Jedi? Would there be a trial or would somebody kill him just the same? And what would happen to the families of the thousands of dead? Would he and his son, the protege of his two dead friends, one he had killed and the other had hid from him, would they sit there and play board games? Would his sister forgive him? But that never got answered because Anakin Skywalker died, brought himself back, and then died again in the story. But it was all fine because there was redemption in the end.

 

Kylo Ren was a child, screaming across the universe, but people died none the less, because this was a war and people died everyday.

 

Phasma would not be one of them. That’s the funny thing about creatures. They may be honorable, willing to fall on their swords, willing to fall on others for them, but they have to be taught kindness first, get breathed on by folks like Poe and Rey and and and. It doesn’t matter. Phasma is not a hero. She is not brave. She did not have a child or a wife or anybody to reach against the casima to haul her back.

 

She stole a ship and hailed for D’Qar, because she knew her fate in all of this. She was not a hero. She had several hundred pieces of data onboard with her. She was not brave. She was pragmatic.

 

She hit the ground, with six different fighters on her ass, ready to shoot. Poe was in one of them. Finn was in another. She handed the discs to Organa because she was pragmatic and not a hero or brave or. She had twenty-eight crew members on her ship because that was all she could take, that was all she could give.

 

“Why are you here?” Organa asked because answers matter.

 

Phasma shrugged helplessly. “I want out. Kylo Ren is insane and going to get me and my crew killed. I am loyal. I am loyal to the First Order.”

 

Loyalty isn’t a fickle thing. Don’t sell that lie. It’s tucked up against spines, nestled behind the teeth, slipping out under tongues, but it is not fickle. It’s soldiers at your back and the knowledge that you will step in front of them.

 

“Alright then,” Leia said. It was not her first day on the job. Poe Dameron had to get it from somewhere and she was the one who married a nerfherder. She is not the damsel of the story. She is not a one dimensional character to be written away when you’re done with her.

 

Here’s the thing: people save themselves, over and over until they believe they can. They save other people, they bring themselves back to life.

 

Anakin Skywalker would take off that helmet. It does not forgive his dead, but he got redemption. He did. He earned it with a few last words and his death. It was all well chosen, but the universe spins on.

 

There would be a moment, over ketchup of all things, that Finn would sit down next to Phasma. She had not claimed a different name because she was not a girl who said prayers anymore. She was pragmatic. She was not a hero and she would burn the world down for her soldiers. They were hers. But she is not a hero and they are not heroics to be flung at enemies like gods of war.

 

There’s B-569, who’s a rough shot and likes to paint words with her hands. There’s G-34, who is never going to sleep still a day in his life. There’s H-SS4, who will continue to hoard food for the rest of hers. There’s . . .the list goes on because it must go on.

 

That moment in the caf, Finn sat next to a woman who tortured him, not because she was kind nor heroic, but because she was loyal. So loyal. He did betray her, but they were all betrayed. They were too young but they would carry those rifles because they simply were.

 

“Thanks, for not killing me,” Phasma said softly.

 

“Thanks, for not killing me,” Finn replied steadily. 

 

He had weeks of pressing up against Poe’s spine. He was redeemed but only because he had not killed any of the bad guys, oh the good guys, excuse me. He had years of learning who the monsters were. He pressed himself up against Poe every night and prayed that he would remember the difference in the morning.

 

He hated her. He was not kind. She had been his CO, the one to order him to be reprogrammed, but he was hers. But they were not heroics to be flung onto their enemies like gods. They can be understanding, they can be forgiving.

 

Phasma had 28 crew with her. They picked up different names. She had a crew of 28 who picked her, because they were loyal. They took two weeks to learn everything they could of the Resistance and then assimilated, because they knew, they knew that they would be handed over if it came to that.

 

They crowded into her room at night, laying on the floor in a tangle of limbs. Phasma gave her rack to one, because he was shot during the escape. She is pragmatic. She watched Organa when she could because Organa didn’t go anywhere near her. She is pragmatic.

 

Rey came back with a Jedi Master in tow. Phasma couldn’t help herself, she snorted at the sight of an ancient man dragged around by a stick of a girl. Phasma passed Rey the ketchup. Rey spared her a glance and dug in.

 

Phasma watched Finn pick up a lightsaber habit. She didn’t have much time to spare to become a savior of the Resistance. She spent her hours debriefing those she would have gladly tortured and killed not two weeks ago. Her crew disappeared into engineering and tactical forces alike.

 

Organa caught her outside of the caf. “There’s a raid next week on a First Order planet. If your people want to fight, they can. If they don’t, they do not have to.”

 

Phasma, leader of the First Order, wanted to mock her methods. The little girl who prayed she’d be the best in her squad, would follow her into the depths of that territory.

 

“I will pack then,” Phasma told her.

 

Phasma went. She wore her armour. It was not feminine or pretty. It had no place for the paint others painted on their lips and nails. It did not need that space. Phasma was not a little girl who said prayers.

 

Leia, Leia now after that explosion, bought her some nail paint anyway. She had bought some for Finn and Rey as well, because she could write it off as “rec equipment”, but more than that, she just could. Rey liked blue and green. Finn painted everything in clashing red and purple. Phasma is still not entirely sure that the walls were supposed to be that color.

 

Leia took her out one day. She taught her lazy loops in an X-wing. She touched down and let Phasma take the pilot seat, teaching her tricks and how not to hit the planet’s surface. Phasma felt free for the first time in a long time, if not ever. Leia gripped her hands went they finally stopped. She was shaking.

 

“I- thank you,” she said for the first time.

 

She had pale pink toe paint on. Her fingers were free but Finn kept eyeing them. They’d probably get purplified later. She had on cloth shorts and a tunic. She wore sturdy boots on her feet. Her hair had grown out into a spiky cut that Poe was teaching her how to style quicker.

 

She had a woman sitting next to her in the passenger side.

 

Nobody saved her. She did not have a Luke Skywalker to bring her back. Just as well, she thought, that man had more angst than desireable in a savior. She did not need one.

 

She is pragmatic.

 

I dare you to call that a sin to her face.

 

She didn’t bring herself back because this was never a fairy tale to children. It was not going to be one. The First Order tells tales of her to their soldiers.  _ There is a monster in the dark named Phasma. She was never one of us, just a Resistance spy.  _ Just as well that the Resistance has their own stories of the 29. She didn’t buy that version any easier.

  
Leia was still mourning and Phasma was still learning to breath without her armour. They were getting used to be tied to other things. They both lost their sense of gravity. Well, that wasn’t true now was it. Leia had people at her back and Phasma had 28 soldiers around her, but they weren’t heroics to flung like gods of war.

**Author's Note:**

> okay, I hate Kylo Ren. And I wrote this to try to deal with the fact that Disney is going to try to redeem his ass. It did not turn out the way I wanted. It did. It turned out exactly how it should.
> 
> The first country Hitler conquered was Germany. Idk. I read the Book Thief again and I got into a really bad cultural relativist debate recently. And I read amazing character studies, one on Pansy Parkison, Dirgewithoutmusic, and one on Eustace Scrubbs, SSAriel. 
> 
> I don’t know why all these characters want a love affair with ketchup but they do. Let them.
> 
> Sidenote: I know I used heroics wrong, I do not care. Use the other definition of heroic verse if you must.
> 
> Better title pending.


End file.
